Hello, I'm a brand new Axiom owner. I have a pair of floorstanding M60 V3s setup for stereo but they are placed on each side of a large, 65 inch projection TV on a stand. The listening position is about 10 feet from the speakers and they are spaced about 7 feet apart (minimum due to TV). I know this is too wide for the listening position but I can't move the listening position rearward due to space constraints.

The listening room is carpeted with two small cloth covered rockers on either side of the listening position's cloth covered loveseat. The drop ceiling is pressboard with a hard shell painted surface.

I'm getting a horrible mid-freq bump that makes the M60s (and the previous Polk Audio Monitor 60 Series II) sound like crap. The mids simply jump out and howl. I assumed my Polk speakers were not up to my standards and decided to upgrade to the M60s but the problem isn't with the speakers. I have tried another amp but the problem is exactly the same.

I have verified correct polarity at the speakers and amp. I have tried moving both pairs of speakers in and out from the wall and tried toe-in and toe-out and angling the speakers upward and downward. Toe-out helped a little. I have tried moving the speakers away from the TV but I can't get them more than about 1 foot from the TV due to space constraints.

I suspected the large flat TV screen between the speakers might be causing the problem so I put a cloth covered recliner directly in front of the listening position so it blocked the TV but not the speakers. This has helped a lot but it's not a practical solution.

Hi Rob, welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear about your troubles. I found a thread over at avs that talks about something similar to what you are describing, maybe read through it. This is most likely something related to the room, some rooms just don't play nice without some treatment. One of our regular members just treated his room for early reflections and came away very impressed with the results. I am sure with a little effort your problem will be minimized or eliminated.

Thanks for the link Richard. I do have a wooden coffee table in front of my loveseat that could cause some serious early reflections. I'll try moving it away.

Ken, I'm running a raspberry pi server into an Aune T1 DAC (pre-out) to a tube amp with only a volume control so I currently don't have a lot of control. This setup does sound fantastic with headphones though.

I moved the coffee table to behind the listening position and it didn't make a difference. I then covered the TV with a thick blanket and it made a big difference--sounds much better. I'm going to play around with more blankets.

I was going to say toe-in, but looks like you've tried that. What AVR are you using and what mode are you listening to in music: Direct, Stereo, PLIIx, etc? Also, did you configure by using setup, dB levels, distance, etc by using built in Mic or manual setup with SPL meter?

I'm going to take a different tack on this. Since you said you have a mid-frequency bump on both pairs of speakers, yet it sounds great over headphones, I'm suspecting the vacuum-tube amplifier. Many tube amps do NOT have smooth frequency response and perhaps the bump is a product of non-linear response in the amplifier and or distortion. Did you try a solid-state amplifier instead of the tube amp?